Body Gestures Research Articles

Explainability in Human-Robot Teaming

In human-robot teaming, one of the crucial keys for the team’s success is that the robot and human teammates can collaborate accordingly in a coordinated manner. Each teammate should be aware of what the other teammate is going to perform and likely to need. In this context, a robot is expected to understand human teammate intention and performance and explain its actions and decisions and its rationale to its teammate. In addition, the capability to model the expectation of a human teammate empowers the robot to collaborate with human understandably and expectedly, leading to effective teaming. Through forming mental modelling, the robot can understand the impact of its own behaviour on the mental model of the human. In addition, the desirable traits in human-robot teaming, including fluent behaviour, adaptability, trust-building, effective communication, and explainability, can be achieved through mental modelling. In this work, we introduce a scenario for human-robot teaming considering all the five desirable traits in teaming with the main focus on explainability and effective communication. Using a general model reconciliation, the expectation of the human teammate of the robot can be modelled, and the explanation can be generated. In a considered scenario including Care-O-bot 4 service robot and a human teammate, we assume that the robot detects the human’s current task (analysing his body gesture) and predicts his following action and his expectation from the robot. In a reciprocal interdependence task, the robot coordinates his behaviour and acts accordingly by picking up the relevant tool. Through explanation and communication robot further offers the outcome of his decision to the human teammate and adapts its action by handing the tool to the human upon his desire.

Attentional Focus Effects and Singing: Enhancing Vocal Performance through Body Movements and Gestures as External Foci of Attention

Attentional Focus Effects and Singing: Enhancing Vocal Performance through Body Movements and Gestures as External Foci of Attention

Kabbalat Shabbat Services for First-Graders: Recognition of Gender and Motherhood in Reform Jewish Ritual

The Shabbat service is one of the most popular practices in the Jewish liturgy, and over the years it has reflected various social and cultural changes. The service is not only textual prayer but also a performative act, including bodily gestures and using sacred objects and space. In this article, based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Yuval Reform congregation located in Gedera, I analyze special Shabbat services for the first day of school. I argue that the ceremony is constructed by the women in the congregation as a gender performance advocating gender equality and motherhood experiences. Every year, they create a new prayer book, which includes prayers honoring the activities of teachers and mothers, and creatively perform physical rituals by using sacred symbols charged with new interpretations. Thus the congregants are not only undermining both Orthodox rules and the structure of Reform Shabbat services; they are also rejecting patriarchal norms and expressions in the religious space. Although the Reform congregation thereby positions itself as a gender-safe zone, the ethnographic analysis also exposes resistance and tensions – reflecting the difficulty of abolishing heteronormative gender norms and Jewish traditional perceptions in Israeli society.

Role of Human Body Posture Recognition Method Based on Wireless Network Kinect in Line Dance Aerobics and Gymnastics Training

With the rapid development of the information society, human body gesture recognition has become an important technology for human‐computer interaction. This paper combines Kinect’s human bone monitoring technology with auxiliary gymnastics training. The gymnastics and dance training can correct students’ wrong movements in time through feedback and improve the training efficiency, so as to meet the needs of nature and harmony of human‐machine interaction. In this paper, based on the wireless network Kinect, the human body posture recognition method and tracking technology are studied, and the joint point angle representation method based on the fixed axis is proposed, and the posture recognition method based on the joint point angle is improved, which can accurately recognize the human body posture. Aiming at the situation that the human joint points are occluded, the human joint point repair algorithm is improved. The algorithm is based on the proportion of human bone nodes and the characteristics of human motion, and based on geometric principles, it repairs the occluded points. The feasibility of the original joint point data, angle feature, and distance feature in expressing human behavior is analyzed through experiments, a standard gymnastics movement database is established, and new gymnastics movements can be entered at any time. A gymnastics auxiliary training system is designed, which can analyze and evaluate the exercises of the trainer from the joint point coordinates and the angle formed by the joints and provide the trainer with intuitive error correction prompts. The human body posture recognition method studied in this paper can accurately give the difference between the trainer’s movement and the standard movement, and the trainer can adjust the movement posture according to the prompts, improve the level of gymnastics, and achieve the purpose of auxiliary training. Experiments show that the algorithm model has an accuracy rate of 95.7% for human body posture recognition, and it plays a huge role in line dance aerobics and gymnastics training.

The Image of Syncretic Javanese Women in Digdo Irianto’s Paintings

Through his paintings, Digdo Irianto unveils figures of Javanese women showing an expressive, bold and open face and body gestures. His imagination was based on a cultural change observed in Surakarta society which is heavily dominated by syncretic characteristics, evoking Javanese traditional cultures and modern culture. His conceptual imagination indicates his desire to put a woman in an honorable position where the body can be interpreted as a medium meant to sow and revive a dry soul following the presence of image embedded in modern life. Javanese women can synergize the spirit and essence of Javanese cultural values which uphold philosophical ??and practical, materialistic modern culture.

The world of communication: non-verbal communication (NVC), neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and persuasion strategies

What are the forms, methods and characteristics of communication? Communication, understood as the exchange of information from an issuer to a recipient, comes into contact with all the social and cultural spheres belonging to it and is focused here to show the main markers that characterize it. The work is based on an analysis of all those aspects that can influence the communication exchange or even distort the meaning of the message sent. The research questions were also addressed to the fascinating field of non-verbal communication and the characteristics of body gestures, understood as distinctive signals with a strong social impact, also and above all in police interviews and interrogations. Particular reserve was addressed to the many years of experience of Michael Napier, special agent of the prestigious Quantico FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit, for his meticulous work on the aspects necessary in the proper execution of an investigative investigation. The work ends with a current reflection and deepening on the techniques of persuasion and manipulation of communication, which can become a real weapon to strike, on the one hand positively convincing and working on self-esteem and to help individuals achieve their own objectives, on the other hand by manipulating and misinforming a large slice of the population with psychological, political and digital tools.

Performance Evaluation of Support Vector Machine Algorithm for Human Gesture Recognition

Research on human motion gesture recognition has been widely used for several technological devices to support monitoring of human-computer interaction, elderly people and so forth. This research area can be observed by conducting experiments for several body movements, such as hand movements, or body movements as a whole. Many methods have been used for human motion gesture recognition in previous studies. This paper attempted to collect data of performance evaluation of support vector machine algorithms for human motion recognition. We developed research methodology that is adapted PRISMA. This methodology is consisted of four main steps for reviewing scientific articles, including identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion criteria. After we obtained result of systematic literature review. We also conducted pilot study of SVM implementation for human gesture recognition. Based on the previous study result, the accuracy performance of vector machine algorithms for body gesture dataset is between 82.88% - 99.92% and hand gesture dataset 88.24% - 95.42%. Based on our pilot experiment, recognition accuracy with the SVM algorithm for human gesture recognition achieved 94,50% (average) accuracy.

Analysis of body gestures in anger expression and evaluation in android robot

ABSTRACT Recent studies in human–human interaction (HHI) have revealed the propensity of negative emotional expression to initiate affiliating functions which are beneficial to the expresser and also help fostering cordiality and closeness amongst interlocutors during conversation. Effort in human–robot interaction has also been devoted to furnish robots with the expression of both positive and negative emotions. However, only a few have considered body gestures in context with the dialogue act functions conveyed by the emotional utterances. This study aims on furnishing robots with humanlike negative emotional expression, specifically anger-based body gestures roused by the utterance context. In this regard, we adopted a multimodal HHI corpus for the study, and then analyzed and established predominant gestures types and dialogue acts associated with anger-based utterances in HHI. Based on the analysis results, we implemented these gesture types in an android robot, and carried out a subjective evaluation to investigate their effects on the perception of anger expression in utterances with different dialogue act functions. Results showed significant effects of the presence of gesture on the anger degree perception. Findings from this study also revealed that the functional content of anger-based utterances plays a significant role in the choice of the gesture accompanying such utterances.

Comparative analysis of Human Activity Recognition and object detection

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is the ability to interpret human body gesture or motion and determine human activity or action. Most of the tasks can be done automatically if they can be recognized via HAR system. HAR is an essential part of various scientific research contexts and the daily defence system i.e. surveillance, healthcare and human computer interaction (HCI). In computer vision, images and videos are analysed using different techniques. While recognition of activity in the real time environment the speed of the technique matters because if the system can detect the object in the images and videos at real time then it can be forwarded for the activity recognition process. How correctly the technique detects the object and differentiates the human object and other object and how much time it is taking to give the correct object, the number of frames it processes per second all matters. This paper deals with the comparison of the performance of YOLO (You Only Look Once) and Faster R-CNN in recognizing the human activity and detecting object.

Facial expressions contribute more than body movements to conversational outcomes in avatar-mediated virtual environments

This study focuses on the individual and joint contributions of two nonverbal channels (i.e., face and upper body) in avatar mediated-virtual environments. 140 dyads were randomly assigned to communicate with each other via platforms that differentially activated or deactivated facial and bodily nonverbal cues. The availability of facial expressions had a positive effect on interpersonal outcomes. More specifically, dyads that were able to see their partner’s facial movements mapped onto their avatars liked each other more, formed more accurate impressions about their partners, and described their interaction experiences more positively compared to those unable to see facial movements. However, the latter was only true when their partner’s bodily gestures were also available and not when only facial movements were available. Dyads showed greater nonverbal synchrony when they could see their partner’s bodily and facial movements. This study also employed machine learning to explore whether nonverbal cues could predict interpersonal attraction. These classifiers predicted high and low interpersonal attraction at an accuracy rate of 65%. These findings highlight the relative significance of facial cues compared to bodily cues on interpersonal outcomes in virtual environments and lend insight into the potential of automatically tracked nonverbal cues to predict interpersonal attitudes.

A audiodescrição na dança em cadeira de rodas

O estudo teve como objetivo elaborar um roteiro de Audiodescrição (AD) de um espetáculo de dança em cadeira de rodas (DECR); e verificar a significância e viabilidade deste recurso, quanto a compreensão da descrição dos movimentos, por pessoas com deficiência visual e profissionais na área da dança. Trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva e exploratória ao qual foi construído e apresentado o roteiro da AD do espetáculo de dança em cadeira de rodas. O roteiro foi aplicado em um software de legendagem Workshop (SW), versão 2.51 e a AD da dança em cadeira de rodas foi apreciada pelos participantes da pesquisa. Como instrumento de coleta de dados todos responderam a um questionário sobre os significados/entendimento da coreografia somado a uma entrevista quanto a compreensão dos gestos corporais narrados na AD. As respostas foram comparadas entre si buscando identificar as concordâncias e discrepâncias assinaladas pelos participantes. Pelos resultados podemos analisar que este estudo trouxe contribuições expressivas, sistematizando termos referentes à dança em cadeira de rodas no estilo Rumba, permitindo que esta modalidade de dança seja acessível ao deficiente visual em futuras competições nacionais e internacionais.

Human Expressions of Object Preference Affect Dogs' Perceptual Focus, but Not Their Action Choices.

Inspired by work on infants, we investigated whether dogs’ behaviors are guided by human displays of preference, contrasting with the animals’ own choices. In a rewarded fetching task, dogs override their own interest toward “disgusting” objects and retrieve what the owner prefers. However, in previous research, both objects were inherently neutral to the dogs and they might have chosen the owner’s object because a “happy owner” predicts a positive outcome. If dogs are indeed able to override their own interests, we expected them to fetch the owner’s object even if (1) they would prefer another one and (2) do not receive a reward for it. Two objects were compared, a toy (hoop) and a bracelet. After establishing that the toy was preferred by all dogs in an initial test of preference, we applied a two-choice procedure to test if either fetching or looking at the objects from a distance would be affected by the owner’s choice. In Study 1, the owner demonstrated happiness toward the bracelet and disgust toward the toy with both facial and body gestures accompanied by verbalizations. Then the owner asked the dog to fetch, without providing additional guiding cues. All dogs fetched the toy, indicating that their own choice was not overcome by the positive emotional state signaled by the owner. To avoid direct contact with the objects, in Study 2 we placed the objects on an unreachable spot after the emotion demonstration and measured the duration of looking at the objects. In the “bracelet” (non-matching) group the owners demonstrated happiness toward the bracelet and disgust toward the toy, similar to Study 1. In the “toy” (matching) group the owners showed happiness toward the toy and disgust toward the bracelet. When the objects were placed on the unreachable spot, dogs looked at both objects for the same amount of time in the non-matching group, but longer at the toy in the matching group. Although the studies did not demonstrate that dogs override their own preferences for an object, the results suggested that the owners’ expressed preference was perceived by the dogs and guided their perceptual focus.

Performing Gender and Political Recognition: Israeli Reform Jewish Life-cycle Rituals

Anthropologists see life-cycle rituals as a significant way to understand gender roles and identities in religious communities. While in the past, these compulsory rituals involved a significant change in a person’s social status, today many of their traditional features have been transformed. This ethnographic inquiry examines Bat Mitzvah ceremonies (coming of age rituals for girls) in Israeli Reform Jewish congregations. By including new blessings, appropriating masculine religious symbols, and creating new bodily gestures, the feminine life-cycle ritual challenges the traditional Jewish laws and contemporary socio-cultural constructions of the Israeli Jewish community. The exclusion of the Israeli Reform community from mainstream Jewish religion turns this ritual into a subversive act that battles local Jewish Orthodoxy authority. The ceremony is a political performance, which positions the Reform congregations as an activist religious agent for gender equality in the Israeli public space.

Neuromotor Control of Speech and Speechlike Tasks: Implications From Articulatory Gestures

Purpose This study aimed to provide a preliminary examination of the articulatory control of speech and speechlike tasks based on a gestural framework and identify shared and task-specific articulatory factors in speech and speechlike tasks. Method Ten healthy participants performed two speechlike tasks (i.e., alternating motion rate [AMR] and sequential motion rate [SMR]) and three speech tasks (i.e., reading of “clever Kim called the cat clinic” at the regular, fast, and slow rates) that varied in phonological complexity and rate. Articulatory kinematics were recorded using an electromagnetic kinematic tracking system (Wave, Northern Digital Inc.). Based on the gestural framework for articulatory phonology, the gestures of tongue body and lips were derived from the kinematic data. These gestures were subjected to a fine-grained analysis, which extracted (a) four gestural features (i.e., range of magnitude [ROM], frequency [Freq], acceleration time, and maximum speed [maxSpd]) for the tongue body gesture; (b) three intergestural measures including the peak intergestural coherence (InterCOH), frequency at which the peak intergestural coherence occurs (Freq_InterCOH), and the mean absolute relative phase between the tongue body and lip gestures; and (c) three intragestural (i.e., interarticulator) measures including the peak intragestural coherence (IntraCOH), Freq_IntraCOH, and mean absolute relative phase between the tongue body and the jaw, which are the component articulators that underlie the tongue body gesture. In addition, the performance rate for each task was also derived. The effects of task and sex on all the articulatory and behavioral measures were examined using mixed-design analysis of variance followed by post hoc pairwise comparisons across tasks. Results Task had a significant effect on performance rate, ROM, Freq, maxSpd, InterCOH, Freq_InterCOH, IntraCOH, and Freq_IntraCOH. Compared to the speech tasks, the AMR task showed a decrease in ROM and increases in Freq, InterCOH, Freq_InterCOH, IntraCOH, and Freq_IntraCOH. The SMR task showed similar ROM, Freq, maxSpd, InterCOH, and IntraCOH as the fast and regular speech tasks. Conclusions The simple phonological structure and demand for rapid syllable rate for the AMR task may elicit a distinct articulatory control mechanism. Despite being a rapid nonsense syllable repetition task, the relatively complex phonological structure of the SMR task appeared to elicit a similar articulatory control mechanism as that of speech production. Based on these shared and task-specific articulatory features between speech and speechlike tasks, the clinical implications for articulatory assessment were discussed.

A Close Look at the Imitation Performance of Children with Autism and Typically Developing Children Using a Robotic System

Deficit in imitation skills is one of the core symptoms of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this study, we have tried to look closer at the body gesture imitation performance of 20 participants with autism, i.e. ASD group, and 20 typically developing subjects, i.e. TD group, in a set of robot-child and human-child gross imitation tasks. The results of manual scoring by two specialists indicated that while the TD group showed a significantly better imitation performance than the ASD group during the tasks, both ASD and TD groups performed better in the human-child mode than the robot-child mode in our experimental setup. Next, to introduce an automated imitation assessment system, we present different mathematical models of the children’s imitation performance using some State-Image based algorithms including Acceptable Bound, Mahalanobis Distance, and Signals’ Cross-Correlations as well as Hidden Markov Models based on the time-dependent kinematics data of the participants’ joints. Among the different studied models, we observed that the “State-Image Acceptable Bound method with position, velocity, and acceleration features” is the best one. This method has a mean Pearson correlation of ~ 45%, which is fairly comparable to the related works (out of autism field) in assessing the quality of dynamic actions. Finally, for a treatment application of using artificial intelligence algorithms in automated evaluation of children’s behaviors as an unbiased and quantifiable measurement in HRI, we propose a reciprocal gross imitation human–robot interaction platform with the potential to aid in the cognitive rehabilitation of children with autism.

What is and what is not an articulatory gesture in speech production

Articulatory data are provided showing that, in languages in which they have phonemic status, (alveolo)palatal consonants, dark /l/ and the trill /r/ are articulated with a single lingual gesture instead of two independent tongue front and tongue body gestures. They are therefore simple, not complex segments. It is argued that tongue body lowering and retraction for dark /l/ and the trill /r/ is associated with manner of articulation requirements and with requirements on the implementation of the darkness percept in the case of dark /l/, and that tongue body raising and fronting for (alveolo)palatals results naturally from the contraction of the genioglossus muscle. These consonant units resemble truly complex palatalized and velarized or pharyngealized dentoalveolars regarding lingual configuration and kinematics, as well as coarticulatory efects and phonological and sound change processes. Contrary to some views, the study also contends that clear /l/ and the tap /?/ are not complex segments but consonants articulated with a more or less neutral tongue body configuration which is subject to considerable vowel coarticulation.

Social Signalling as a Non Verbal Behaviour of Teachers in ESL Classroom Interaction

Non-verbal cues and behaviours are essential aspects of classroom talk, however many studies that were conducted in the field of classroom talk only focused on verbal interaction of teachers' talk and overlooked the importance of non-verbal signalling. The aim of this study is to examine the social signal aspect of teachers' speech in classroom interaction. It particularly investigates the use of non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, bodily gestures and eye contact conveyed by teachers during their classroom lesson, to understand their emotional state and intention. Social signals are chosen as a variable to explore the teachers' classroom interaction as it plays a fundamental role in shaping how messages are delivered to the students in classroom context. Particularly, this study focuses to understand how social signalling shapes the success of teachers' classroom intentions. It is specifically concerned with exploring teachers' non-verbal behaviour and its effectiveness in classroom interaction. This study is beneficial to teachers in understanding their non-verbal cues better to accomplish effective classroom talk.

Deconstructing celebratory acts following goal scoring among elite professional football players.

Goal celebration in sport is mostly spontaneous and is manifested via vocal expressions and bodily gestures aimed at communicating emotions. The aim of this study is to deconstruct the celebratory acts among elite professional football players in the European Champions League following scoring a goal, and to capture the multiple acts and functions of the celebrations. In examining the 2018/19 season of the European Champions League tournament, we draw attention to the players' celebrations and their corresponding social and individual functions. All goals/celebrations (K = 366) were used for the analyses. To analyze the goal celebration acts, a socio-psychological model was established which is comprised of several theories. To describe the goal celebration acts across the competition stages (e.g., preliminary and final), match location (i.e., home or away), time phase (0-15, 15-45, 45-75, 75-90, 90+ minutes), scoring mode (i.e., prior to the goal, after the goal), and players' continent origin (Europe, Africa, Asia, South/Central, and North America), the number and percent of all the celebratory acts were counted and presented in their respective mode (i.e., single, double, and team). The main findings indicate that (a) most of the goal celebration acts were performed interactively by the scoring player and his teammates, (b) the interactive modes of celebration lasted longer than the modes which were performed non-interactively, (c) the celebration lasted longer following goal scoring in the final stage than in the preliminary stage, (d) the celebration duration lasted the longest time when the goal was scored during the overtime phase (90+ min) of the final but not the preliminary stage, and (e) players from Africa and South America demonstrated religious acts more than their European counterparts. We assert that our conceptual model enables the categorization of a variety of personal and social meanings to the celebrations on the field during the most thrilling moments of the game.

The influence of performing gesture type on interpersonal musical timing, and the role of visual contact and tempo

Bodily gestures play an important role in the communication of expressive intentions between humans. Music ensemble performance, as an outstanding example of nonverbal human communication, offers an exemplary context to study and understand the gestural control and communication of these expressive intentions. An important mechanism in music ensemble performance is the anticipation and control of interpersonal timing. When performing, musicians are involved in a complex system of mutual adaptation which is not completely understood so far. In this study, we investigated the role of performers' gestures in the mediation process of interpersonal timing in a dyad performance. Therefore, we designed an experiment in which we controlled for the use of hand and arm movements in a musical task, in which dyads were asked to synchronously tap out a melody. Next to their comfortable/natural way of tapping, we instructed participants to either perform pronounced expressive hand and arm gestures in between successive taps, or to restrict from any overt body movement. In addition, we looked at effects of visual contact (yes/no) and tempo (slow: 50 beats per minute; fast: 100 beats per minute). The results show that performers' gestures improve interpersonal musical timing, in terms of the consistency and accuracy of onset asynchronies, and of the variability of produced inter-onset intervals. Interestingly, we found that the use of expressive gestures, in regard to comfortable/natural movements, add to these positive timing effects, but only when there is visual contact and at the slow tempo. In addition, we found that the type of gestures employed by musicians may modulate leader-follower dynamics. Together, these findings are explained by human anticipation mechanisms facilitated by gesturing, shedding new light on the principles underlying human communication of expressive intentions, through music.

Some interactional functions of finger pointing in signed language conversations

Interlocutors participating in conversation collaborate with each other to coordinate their actions and talk. Research on spoken language conversations has shown that speakers use bodily gestures, in addition to speech, to regulate their interaction. The current study expands on this research by investigating how signed language users finger point to express interactional meanings. Studies of pointing in signed languages have largely focused on referential functions, as signers frequently point to refer to themselves and others, as well as visible and invisible referents. However, this study demonstrates how signers also finger point to deliver information, cite previous contributions, seek responses, manage turns, and give feedback. These interactional meanings are important, just as identifying discourse referents is important. Language theory should be able to accommodate this complexity of language in conversation, which involves an interplay between different types of semiosis (description, depiction, indexicality) in an inclusive, systematic way.